The American Cancer Society predicts that 1.27 million new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in the United States in 2001. The number of cancer-related deaths for 2001 are predicted to include: 157,400 deaths from lung cancer, 31,500 deaths from prostate cancer, 40,000 deaths from breast cancer, and 56,700 deaths from colorectal cancer. Lung, prostate, breast, and colon cancer are the most common tumors.
Early detection of neoplastic disease (cancer) is critical to ensure favorable treatment of the disease. When patients go to seek for treatment, they are generally presenting with symptoms due to distant metastases, meaning that too often the cancer is detected too late. Therefore, the ability to detect and diagnose cancer through the identification of tumor markers is an area of widespread interest.
It is therefore of interest to identify early stage cancers with neural and/or neuroendocrine components/differentiation in a minimally invasive manner. In particular, it would be a great boon to the treatment of cancers to identify an array of tumor-associated antigens that are specific for the cancer type. An antibody raised against such antigens can be used in the diagnosis and targeted treatment of neoplastic diseases. Auto-antibodies against such antigens generated as a part of subject's immune response can be used in the diagnosis of neoplastic diseases.